Gear & Gadgets —

Microsoft’s first stab at a tablet: Surface reviewed

Does Redmond have what it takes to be a tablet manufacturer?

Performance, battery life, and internals

Our ability to formally test the performance of Windows RT devices is severely restricted by the lack of available benchmarking applications for the platform, leaving us with little option but to use in-browser tests.

The Surface ran SunSpider in 969 milliseconds, and got a score of 708 in Google's Octane tests. The SunSpider score is almost identical to the score achieved by the essentially identical Asus VivoTab RT. The Surface's Octane score is surprisingly about 15 percent higher than the VivoTab RT's score.

In use, the Surface generally felt quick. One activity was consistently slow, however; if I started playing a video in the video app, then switched to another application (pausing the video automatically) and then went back to the video application (resuming playback), the app would consistently stutter and drop frames for several seconds. Some apps started a little slower than I would like, but this is a trait not restricted to Surface.

Microsoft estimates that the battery life in mixed use is "up to eight hours." That's consistent with my own findings; sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less, with a workload of browsing and typing. In a more punishing test, playing video endlessly with the brightness and volume turned up all the way, it achieved exactly six-and-a-half hours.

The default power management settings are very aggressive, putting the machine to sleep after just two minutes of inactivity. I was disappointed that the system doesn't provide an estimate of expected battery life. Although it tracks the percentage remaining, it doesn't tell you how long it should actually last given current usage patterns.

My understanding is that Windows needs certain information from the battery and power management subsystem to do this, and while most x86 laptops provide the information, it seems that the Surface does not. The Asus VivoTab RT is similarly deficient, so it's possible that it's going to be a Windows RT-wide gap. Having a percentage is all well and good, but I want a time estimate; I want to know "are you going to last to the end of this flight, or should I turn down the screen brightness a bit?"

Internally, the Surface is very similar to the Asus VivoTab RT, and I suspect it will also prove similar to the other Windows RT devices that come to market. From a traditional PC perspective, it's a little peculiar. Common PC interfaces like the ATA disk interface and PCI bus are eschewed in favor of MultiMediaCard and I2C.

Software

The Surface tablet I was given came with Windows RT and Office RT (out of the box this will be a preview, but updates to the final version are already available) and nothing else.

Windows RT covers all the basics. It includes all the standard Metro apps that are bundled with Windows 8, including the communications apps (Mail, Calendar, People [contact management]), Internet Explorer 10, the media apps (Photos, Music, and Video), and the Bing apps (Bing search, Weather, News, and several more). It includes almost all of the Windows 8 desktop applets too, such as Explorer, Notepad, and Paint. There are two notable omissions: Windows Media Player and Windows Media Center are both absent from Windows RT. Office RT includes OneNote, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.

Unlike the Asus VivoTab RT, which has a number of Asus-specific applications (such as a custom camera app and an app to send SMS messages) promoted in a special section of the Store, there is no selection of unique Surface-specific applications, just some recommendations of software that anyone could use.

The only thing that seems to be Surface-specific is the logo that appears when the operating system boots.

Conclusion

The Surface is a nice tablet. The design and aesthetic are pleasing, the feel in the hands, particularly of the kickstand and magnetic cover connection is excellent. But is it worth buying on the day of release?

The big problem Microsoft has is that right now it doesn't matter how good Surface is. The decision of whether or not to buy depends not on Surface itself, but on Windows RT. The only third-party applications that will run on Windows RT are those that use the Metro interface and are distributed through the Windows Store. At the moment, there just aren't that many applications, and many of the ones that exist are mediocre.

If you are confident that the ecosystem will flourish—and fast—and don't mind the inability to use legacy desktop applications, then Windows RT is worth considering.

If you are a home user who really needs Word, Excel, PowerPoint, or OneNote, and don't intend to use any of those programs in any capacity that could be regarded as "commercial," then Windows RT is worth considering.

But if you're not confident that the Windows Store ecosystem will flourish, or if you think it will be several years before it does, then Windows RT is not for you. You should be looking at the iPad and iPad mini, with their large selection of tablet software, or Windows 8, with its compatibility with a huge body of desktop software.

If you want to use Office in a commercial setting, and hence have to buy a separate Office license anyway, then Windows 8 is almost certainly the better option.

If, however, Windows RT is the operating system for you, Surface certainly has a place.

For $499, you get a standalone Surface—no Touch Cover. I was surprised when Microsoft announced this. The company's previous marketing material had said the Touch Cover was included, and the advertising puts the Touch Cover front and center—it's almost more prominent than the Surface itself.

If you don't buy any cover at all, you're missing out on a large part of the Surface experience. I would argue that you're also missing out on a large part of the Windows RT experience: Office RT really needs a keyboard and pointing device to be useful. You'll be almost entirely dependent on Metro-style applications built using WinRT.

But if that's something you're happy with—if you're certain that the Windows Store will be good enough, and you're not especially interested in Office—Surface looks like it will be the cheapest way to take advantage of that ecosystem. At $499, it seems that Surface will undercut the other Windows RT and Windows 8 tablets that have been announced.

For $599 with a bundled Touch Cover, things become a bit trickier. On the one hand, yes, you get the full Surface experience, and Office becomes useful. This is Surface the way it's meant to be used. On the other hand, the Asus VivoTab RT also costs $599 with its clamshell cover. The VivoTab RT isn't as attractive as Surface, and when paired with its clamshell cover, it's a bit bigger and heavier than Surface, but the payoff is that it's more flexible than Surface, it will have better battery life than Surface, it will have better cameras than Surface, and it will have better connectivity than Surface.

Final pricing on Atom-powered Windows 8 tablets could squeeze Surface even harder. Though they won't include Office, that shouldn't faze corporate buyers, as they'd need to buy an Office license even for Surface. Against that deficit, they'll offer substantially greater software compatibility, making them much less of a gamble.

The $699 unit, which bumps the internal storage up to 64GB and also includes a Touch Cover, seems hard to justify to me. The extra $100 gets you an extra 32GB of usable space, but with a 64GB microSDXC card costing just $60 that makes the extra storage feel very expensive. I would avoid it unless I had absolute certainty that I'd need every last byte of disk space.

This puts Microsoft's tablet in an awkward spot. The Surface that has a clear place in the market, the $499 unit, isn't the best model. The Surface that's the best model, the $599 unit, doesn't have a clear place in the market.

This evaluation will also change over time. It is very early in the life of the Windows Store—Windows 8 and Windows RT are not even generally available yet. It's inevitable that the Store will expand, even if there is some uncertainty about how fast it will do so. And as the store grows, so too will the value of Windows RT systems, and so too will the value of Surface.

The Good

Top-notch build quality

Touch Cover really does work

Type Cover is a good solution for high-volume text entry

Clear, bright screen with good viewing angles

First-rate Wi-Fi reliability

The Bad

Touch Cover and Type Cover alike have poor touchpads

No NFC, no GPS, no 3G or 4G

There's no escaping that 1366×768 is a low resolution

$499 unit lacks the all-important Touch Cover

For $599, the Asus VivoTab RT gives you a package that's more versatile and better connected